Handling Complaints

Are you delivering the justice the customer is looking for?

“I’m sorry – it’s just not good enough.”

If your complaints team is still responding with standardized, impersonal communications, you have every right to complain.

Dealing with entrenched, emotionally charged and dissatisfied customers can be tough – but the solution is simple. Customers with complaints want to have a conversation. Research shows that people respond more positively to conversations than to the written word. It also demonstrates that complainants have a deep emotional need for what they believe to be ‘justice’, and that this justice comes in different forms. A complaint is best approached through a skilful, customer-centric conversation that identifies and resolves this emotional need.

A well-known high street bank was struggling with poor complaint resolution in one area of their retail business. Repeated written communications were having little impact. Together with the leadership team, we transformed their approach. A conversation went from being the last resort to, in many cases, the first action. This involved a considerable shift of mindset towards a more proactive customer-centric approach. It also meant developing the skills and confidence to speak directly to the customer, along with the high-level analytical skills to understand customers’ needs and apply quick, efficient solutions. Results have been impressive. 90% of complaints are being resolved within 48 hours. More complex complaints taking more than two weeks to resolve have reduced by 30%, and complaints reportable to the FCA dropped by 9%.

Who will benefit from this program?

This program is for frontline teams who deal with customer complaints, whether by telephone, online or written word.

Research

This infographic summarizes a consumer research survey that we conducted on a random population sample of 1000 respondents.

The research and insight shows that organizations need to rethink conventional approaches to handling complaints. Businesses are driving customers down a complaints route even when it’s a service conversation they want – over 50% of customers don’t want to make a complaint, yet find themselves being driven down an internal process. Without understanding what kind of ‘justice’ the customer is looking for, the right resolutions will be missed and conversations will be escalated unnecessarily. Training people to identify the ‘justice’ the customer is looking for and providing the right resolution to match that ‘justice’ is key to driving resolution at first point of contact (FPOC).